Water management in citrus – A review

Irrigation management is one of the prime concerns of modem citriculture irrespective of water resource availability. A variety of recommendations have emerged world over on irrigation scheduling based on analysis of meterological parameters, evapo-transpiration, depletion of available water content, soil and leaf water potential. The review of literature has revealed best promising results on irrigation scheduling based on depletion pattern of soil available water content. Various micro-irrigation systems have established their superiority over traditionally used flood irrigation with microjets having little edge over rest of the others. Similarly, fertigation has shown good responses on growth, yield, quality and uniform distribution pattern of applied nutrients within the rootzone compared to band placement involving comparatively localized fertilization. Automated fertigation in citrus orchards is a new concept, which would be the only solitary choice amongst many irrigation monitoring methods in near future.